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44 books on 44 presidents: Most. Boring. President. Ever.

Editor's note: This is the twelfth entry in the writer's year-long project to read one book about each of the U.S. Presidents by Election Day 2016. You can also follow Marcus' progress at the @44in52 Twitter account and with this 44 in 52 Spreadsheet.

Hoo boy.

Remember how refreshed I felt after reading about President James Polk and garnering a new perspective on the events that led to the Civil War?

That goodwill didn't take long to squander. Thanks a lot, President Zachary Taylor.

Look, I know history can be boring. For every passage on the Constitutional Convention or the Civil War, subjects that I can really sink my teeth into, there are twice as many on tariffs, bank notes, and inter-party spats.

But my selection of K. Jack Bauer's Zachary Taylor: Soldier, Planter, Statesman of the Old West wasn't just a speed bump for the project, it was a damn buzzsaw. Not least of all because of his disturbing tendency to refer to Native Americans as "redmen" — and he was writing in 1993.

I mean, you'd expect that an author with the name Jack Bauer could come up with more thriller like prose.

I will not make a "24" jokeI will not make a "24" jokeI will not make a "24" jokeI will not make a "24" joke... pic.twitter.com/T04YwTefAS

Instead, the book was dry, and the prose mired with the most detailed description of incremental military maneuvers throughout the wilderness of the Midwest I've ever read.

While Taylor isn't exactly topping anyone's "Best Presidents Ever" list, he's more interesting than this desert-dry retelling. Even if his presidential tenure only last 18 months, his role in the Mexican War (which I became familiar with in the Polk book) should be interesting enough to carry the narrative.

Nope.

Really, I should have heeded the warning from Stephen Floyd, whose Best Presidential Biographies website has been a gold mine of resources and information:

I should have known something unsatisfying loomed when biographer K. Jack Bauer wrote in his introduction that “Taylor’s career … was not only unexciting, but mundane and boring.” That appears to be the understatement of the year.

Note-to-self: when an author warns that his subject’s life was boring … time to fertilize the lawn or re-caulk the bathtub.

Ok, hit the wall hard with Taylor. SO: having read 1 Amer Pres Series book already and with at least 2 more up, is it okay to switch books?

Thankfully, there was a lifeline in the form of John Eisenhower's "American Presidents Series" entry on Taylor. Perhaps just to make myself feel a little better about giving up on a book, I even turned the decision over to the followers on my project's Twitter account, many of whom are slogging their own way through the history of presidents.

After all, what's more presidential in an election year than giving the choice over to the people?

Thankfully, they agreed — and I chucked Bauer in favor of Eisenhower.

POLL! Is it okay for me to abandon my current Zachary Taylor book in favor of the American Pres. Series book?

It's a testament to Eisenhower that I was able to maintain some level of interest in Taylor, despite his short tenure in the White House (he died just 18 months into his term) and the false start on the Bauer book.

Taylor's military career was surprisingly full of encounters with celebrities. He served under William Henry Harrison during the War of 1812, encountered Revolutionary-era General James Wilkinson, and had a bittersweet familial entanglement with future Confederacy president Jefferson Davis.

Trouble is, Taylor would have little eventual impact on the course of the country. It was from politicians around him that the biggest development of his presidency, the Compromise of 1850, would emerge.

This was an attempt to pick up the unfinished business around the statehoods of California and New Mexico left from Polk, and the ongoing battle over the expansion of slavery into these new territories.

Taylor, himself a slave owner, came to favor action that would prevent the spread of slavery. He encouraged California to skip the territorial stage and go straight to statehood, which would leave the decision of slavery in their hands, not Congress'.

Trouble is, Taylor died before Congress could approve the Compromise — spearheaded by Henry Clay and Stephen Douglas. The task of approving it would fall to Taylor's successor, Millard Fillmore.

Taylor's sudden death leaves him as one of the presidents, alongside Harrison, who had the least impact on our nation. Taylor did manage the Clayton–Bulwer Treaty, which prevented a battle between Britain and the U.S. over the possibility of a canal joining the oceans in Nicaragua. Still, the issue would not be completely settled until nearly 65 years later, with the Panama Canal.

At lease there's one thing we should remember him for:

ZT coined the phrase "First Lady." See? Every president leaves his footprint somehow!

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